Affective Equality

This groundbreaking work provides a new perspective on equality by highlighting and exploring affective equality, that aspect of equality that is concerned with relationships of love, care and solidarity. Drawing on interrelated studies of intimate caring - termed here 'love labouring' - by a diverse set of carers and care recipients, this collection provides a new and insightful understanding of the complexity and multidimensionality, as well as the gendered and classed character, of affective inequality. Building on the foundations of the ambitious interdisciplinary study of egalitarian theory Equality: From Theory To Action (Palgrave, 2009, 2nd edition) this research demonstrates the importance of intimate care for egalitarian thinking, as well as the centrality of nurturing, love labouring relationships for personal identities. It shows how care can be undermined by inequalities of material support, time and public recognition, and how inequalities in economic, political and cultural relations generate and reinforce inequalities in the affective system itself. This agenda-setting work will be essential reading for students, researchers and professionals across the social sciences who care about equality.